I was off work today, poorly. I am feeling better, but it has been a bad few days. What do you do when you are poorly and really don’t feel like moving? Well, watch TV of course.
We were watching a TV series from 2009, called “Collision”. I think it was episode 4/6 where there was a scene where a lady talked about her dreams. Those dreams included going to different capitals of the world, finding a hill and listening to the sounds of the city.
I found (I find) the idea fascinating. Gosport definitely has a sound, in fact it has several sounds, depending on the time of the day, and the day of the week. One small problem, there isn’t a hill that I can go to, to distinguish the sound of here, from others.
On the other hand I can stand in the town and listen. That should be distinctive enough. But can write a written description of the sound? I can certainly try.
Apologies, this this is going to be a short one. Stop I have been feeling very poorly all day. It started at about 4 o’clock this morning.
One of my joys in life is laying in a comfortable bed listening to the wind and the rain hammer on the window, but not when I’m feeling like this. Just posting this to keep the count going. 
Last Sunday, when I did my week ahead, I put Friday down as a walk, and an opportunity for more videoing, if I wanted it. Of course, what you can’t always take into account is the weather. Misty woke me at her usual stomp around the bed time of about 5AM. She reminded us again that it was even nearer breakfast time than her last visit.
This time though, when I reached out to give her a stroke, she was absolutely drenched. A clear sign that it was raining. This was around twenty to six. I got up and looked out the window, yes it was chucking it down – I could be fairly confident that there would be no walking this morning. To be honest, I don’t always view that as a disappointment.
On Fridays, for tea, we usually get a take-out, as we did today. Instead of delivery though, we wnt to the shop – that was quicker than getting it delivered and we then we drove to the waterfront at Stokes Bay. The Solent was surprisingly choppy.
It was lovely to see the windsurfers out, enjoying themselves. A small to mid-sized tanker was heading in, presumably to Fawley and the ship in the header picture was making her gentle way out to the main channel, The ship, Disney Fantasy is about 130,000 tons.
I can’t help wondering what she is like on board. I have to be honest, I can’t ever see myself going on a cruise on her.
I think you have to be very careful these days about saying things in videos. I don’t mean naughty stuff, I’m talking about quoting facts or making assertions without being confident that you are saying is true. What’s brought this on?
In the video I’ve been doing over the weekend, I talked about the controversy that preceded the construction of the bus station in 1972. This was around the developments that were going on in town, sometimes involving the demolition of buildings that today, would probably be the subject of a preservation order.
i asked ChatGPT to research the subject of the controversy. Mainly, I wanted to confirm that it was more than a rumour. Whilst it didn’t give details, it definitely confirmed that it wasn’t a rumour and gave me a number of pointers to research it deeper.
I’m sorry to go on about vlogging, but this weekend I have been driven a bit up the wall. I have found the various combinations of tech to not be performing as well as I had hoped or expected. Especially the dropping into slow motion mode without any intervention from me.
I made the decision this morning to have one more go, this time with just the iphone, external microphone and monopod. The results? Well, whilst not technically perfect, and my presentation not being very good at all, yes there is definitely stuff I can use. I will pull it together into a video and release it. I’m not even going to attempt to edit out what ever bloopers there are. It’ll be there warts and all.
The one frustration is I would like the monopod to be free standing, and I am disappointed that the lack of gimbal means the phone can’t track me should I want to move. At the moment, until I am able to rule out the problems.
I don’t want to carry a tripod, the one I have is very good, but it’s heavier than I am prepared to take. I would consider another monopod but with three feet. They are about, but I am uncertain just how safe and stable they are.
My apologies, because in Post 1738 I promised that in post 1739 I would write about Creative Writing, and I didn’t. So, it’s a bit later than promised.
It seems that I can’t let the idea of creative writing go, even though in fiction terms my attempts have been beyond feeble. Several years ago I did a creative writing course at the local college. There were two sides to the course, one that I enjoyed, and one that I didn’t.
The side that I did enjoy was listening to the output from the other students on the course, there were some really quite talented short story writers. Even the tutor on the course, who was a quite successful author agreed that she would be making suggestions as to how they could get their stories published.
The other side, the one that at didn’t enjoy were my attempts to write fiction. I can only describe my efforts as abysmal. Not only were they bad, but I got quite stressed over writing them. And yet, I did that course twice in succession. There were students there who had repeated the course five or six times at least.
You’d think, wouldn’t you that having walked away from that course I would have given up. Certainly on the fiction side. Well, I pretty much have.
I said near the top that I can’t let the idea of creative writing go, so I’ve signed up for the Future Learn course “How to teach Creative Writing”. What’s that? Here’s you (well, me) moaning about pathetic creative writing attempts, and you’ve signed up to do a course on How to teach the subject? What form of madness is this?
Having signed up on the course, I have mad it quite clear that I won’t be writing fiction, that I will only write non-fiction, but I will take their exercises and adapt them for non-fiction. I still haven’t told you why.
Our local U3A does not have a creative writing group (the next town’s U3A does have such a group, but it’s too far away. So, when I join the local U3A, hopefully in January. I will at some point suggest starting such a group, and to support the case, it would be useful to have an understanding of what is involved with the teaching.
In Yesterday’s The Week ahead, I wrote about being a bit excited at the prospect of going to the car rally on Stokes Bay. We went around midday, we didn’t go earlier as we were expecting a delivery. We left for the rally as soon as it arrived.
Well, I have to confess, that I was a little bit dissappointed. It wasn’t as big as last years, the arena was very small and unlike last year didn’t include things like motorbike displays, or cars doing trick. Don’t get me wrong, what was on show was nice (the brass band were very good), but there was nothing I’d class as exciting.
We were going to have lunch, and I was looking forward to either a Bratwurst (no stand offering those) or a burger. When we got to the burger stand, they had sold out of everything except chips. In one way, I’m pleased for the vendor, to have sold out by only just around 2PM is not bad going, at least they had a good day. I will say, though, the chips were very nicely cooked, and I did enjoy them.
The rally was fruitless from a photographic point of view. I took one picture, and even that wasn’t very good.
I have been singularly unsuccessful in producing any video of the Bus Station. My third attempt this evening saw me down at the waterfront yet again. This time, using the gimbal mounted on my tripod for stability. Everything seemed to be working OK, the gimbal was tracking me as I moved. Everything looked good.
When I got home and downloaded the videos I found that in nearly all of them, the first ten seconds were OK, but then everything went in to slow motion – unuseable. I’m going to assume that I am doing something wrong, rather that there being a problem with the gimbal. I should be able to sort that out in hte next day or so – hopefully they won’t start pulling the station down before I am ready.
I think the first think that I want to commit to is doing more than two Facebook Posts this week. You might get them later in the day, but I am determined to do this.
There won’t be an early walk on Monday. It’s a Bank Holiday, so I get the chance of a bit of a lay-in. What’s happening later in the day? A car rally at Stokes Bay. We went last year, and really enjoyed it. Loads of photo opportunities. Should give me some material.
Tuesday will be an early morning walk. I will be lokking at the Bus Station. Although the council have now given permission for its demolition to go ahead, I really don’t think it will start straight away. It could be this week, it could be 6 months – or even longer? I just don’t know.
Wednesday is day for video, so I will have another go at getting some thing for the Bus Station, the two dismal attempts I did on Saturday are both bad. Plus I can’t use part of the second attempt as you can hear music being played and I don’t want to have an even slight risk of a copyright issue.
I won’t be walking on Thursday, family duties.
Friday I have another opportunity for some video. Over the previous weekend, one of the issues I had was how I did the videoing, in two ways; hand holding, except for very exceptional circumstances really doesn’t work for me, the main issue here is that I will always have to carry a tripod (I am thinking about a monopod with feet, i am concerned about just how stable that will be. The second and perhaps more serious problem was my talking to camera. I did have cards prepared, but they didn’t really help. I do need them, I just need to sort out how I am going to use them.
In the title of todays post, I mention Creative Writing. OK, I’m going to cheat a bit and say that I will be writing about CW – tomorow. I’m leaving it in to act as a reminder that I promised to do this.
Earlier in the week, I wrote about a building that I had not really paid much attention to previously. I only noticed it on that day as I had sat opposite it to do a little bit of videoing in a crowded place. It was No. 50 the High Street.
Asking ChatGPT about it told me that the brickwork probably indicated a 1920’s or 30’s build, and just out of interest I asked what shop had been there are the place was built – ChatGPT couldn’t answer that one, but did suggest that the local library may have copies of Kelly’s Directory. I’ve just this second googled when was Kelly’s first published, and was told that was 1836, and that it was actually the Post Office Directory (the forerunner of the telephone directory)?
Our local ibrary, The Gosport Discovery Centre, had some Kelly’s Directories on its shelf. I have to say, what an amazing publication it was giving details for just about everybody private or commercial in the town (to be honest, I think it must have been just home owners, as there was only one entry per row / address.
The earliest edition that I looked at was the 1934-35 issue and No. 50 The High Street was owned by Mr. Charles (Chas) Standhaft. The 1940 – 41 publication lists the same owner. However, with the 1955 and 58 issues show the ownership changing, but staying in the family to an E. G Standhaft. I understand that Kelly’s Directory continued to be published until the mid-1970s and was eventually replaced by the telephone directory and yellow pages.
I’m just quite glad that I was able to find out that information.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
I'm here to work on fiction. Occasionally I'll blog but that's certainly not my focus. You have a specific fiction genre or format you can't find enough of? Ask me. Maybe I got it. I migh share it with you. Otherwise, leave me alone; I'm toiling away at my workbench.
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